Technical Writer

At GitLab, our team of technical writers works at the intersection of product, engineering, design, and marketing. We define how GitLab’s features are communicated across documentation and UI text, ensuring content is clear, accurate, and easy to use. We influence product direction by bringing a deep understanding of how words shape user success in a rapidly evolving DevSecOps platform.

Our team is also responsible for optimizing the creation, management, and deployment of documentation. We manage the systems that ensure quality at scale, from the governance and orchestration of AI workflows to deterministic testing and linting.

Responsibilities

• Partner with GitLab engineers, product managers, designers, and UX researchers to translate features and design decisions into intuitive, user-friendly UI text and scalable documentation that meets our users’ needs.
• Dive in on special projects, planning and authoring new content, and helping to develop new docs site features and processes.
• Collaborate with others across the organization to craft new and improved content. You’ll be at the leading edge of DevOps while contributing to one of the world’s largest open-source projects and engaging with our wider community.

Requirements (all levels)

• Experience:
  • Planning, researching, writing, and editing software documentation.
  • Improving the product user experience by reviewing text, text strings, product labels, and naming.
  • Working in a docs-as-code environment, and using the same workflows and tooling as engineering, operations, and product teams.
  • Using approved AI tools safely and efficiently in these workflows, and writing effective prompts.
  • Using the Linux shell and command-line Git.
  • Some of the following:
    • Using DevOps tools and open-source software.
    • Working in a rapidly changing environment.
    • Working remotely, especially in collaboration with others across countries and time zones.
• Skills and knowledge:
  • Excellent grammar, minimalist documentation design, and effective information architecture.
  • General familiarity with one or more programming languages.
  • Strong organizational skills and ability to triage and prioritize numerous issues and projects.
  • Ability to succeed in a remote, globally distributed work environment.
• Values and core competencies:
  • Working in accordance with our operating principles.
  • Demonstrating our remote work competencies, and modeling respectful and professional communication.

Levels

Technical Writer (Intermediate)

The Technical Writer (Intermediate) reports to the Manager, Technical Writing.

Technical Writer (Intermediate) Job Level

The Technical Writer (Intermediate) is outlined in the Job Levels resource.

Technical Writer (Intermediate) Responsibilities

• AI: Use approved AI tools to research, summarize, draft, reformat, and review content. Take ownership of the output by validating it for accuracy, style, tone, and context.
• Content: Create, merge, and maintain product documentation and release posts for assigned product stages. Review and address internal, customer, or community contributor feedback. Balance priorities.
• Structure: Ensure newly developed content uses content topic types to make product documentation easier for humans to scan and AI to retrieve accurately.
• Organization: Ensure that product documentation pages in your assigned stages are well organized by using good naming and logical groupings.
• User interface: Create or improve the product user experience by writing or reviewing interface text, such as field labels or error messages, with a focus on your assigned stage.
• Reviews: Mainly within your assigned stage, provide effective reviews for content created by others or generated by AI, based on relevant style guides.
• Product knowledge: Understand the technology and features of your assigned stage.
• Process: Understand our processes and suggest changes that help the organization evolve the culture and best practices.
• Communication: Communicate effectively and professionally with other team members.
• Metrics: Learn how to use our metrics and dashboards to track progress on our team or department KPIs, identify areas for improvement, or prioritize your work.
• Documentation systems: Use the documentation systems and workflows effectively, including capabilities such as linting, quality checks, and publishing processes. Learn about our docs-site functionality.
• Cross-functional leadership: Learn about other teams in GitLab and how their work intersects with Technical Writing. Understand how we partner with other functions to provide domain expertise and collaborate to achieve shared customer or company outcomes.
• Leadership: Act as the Technical Writing lead for an assigned stage.

Senior Technical Writer

The Senior Technical Writer reports to the Manager, Technical Writing.

Senior Technical Writer Job Level

The Senior Technical Writer is outlined in the Job Levels resource.

Senior Technical Writer Responsibilities

Extends the Technical Writer (Intermediate) responsibilities in complexity and scope.

• AI: Use approved AI tools to research, summarize, draft, reformat, and review content. Take ownership of the output by validating it for accuracy, style, tone, and context. Contribute to evolving team practices around AI-assisted workflows.
• Content: Efficiently create, merge, and maintain product documentation and release posts for assigned product groups, stages, or sections. Guide improvements to merge requests. Review and address internal, customer, or community contributor feedback. Suggest and balance priorities.
• Structure: Implement content topic types in both new and previously created content to make product documentation easier for humans to scan and AI to retrieve accurately.
• Organization: Ensure that product documentation pages are well organized in your assigned stage or section by using good naming and logical groupings.
• User interface: Actively create or improve the product user experience by writing or reviewing user interface text, such as field labels or error messages, with a focus on your assigned stage or section.
• Reviews: Across your assigned stage or section, provide effective and efficient reviews for content created by others or generated by AI, based on relevant style guides.
• Product knowledge: Deeply understand the technology and features of your assigned stages, and have a general understanding of your assigned section.
• Process: Contribute changes that help the organization evolve the culture and best practices.
• Communication: Communicate effectively and professionally with other team members.
• Metrics: Use dashboards to meet team or department KPIs or prioritize your work. Suggest new metrics or dashboards.
• Documentation systems: Use the documentation systems and workflows effectively. Suggest improvements to capabilities such as linting, quality checks, publishing processes, and docs-site functionality.
• Cross-functional leadership: Understand how the work of other teams in GitLab intersects with Technical Writing. Partner with other functions to provide domain expertise and achieve shared customer or company outcomes.
• Leadership: Act as the Technical Writing lead for your assigned stages.
• Recruiting: Be available to interview potential technical writing candidates.
• Mentoring: Mentor other technical writers and team members regarding best practices and other process knowledge.

Staff Technical Writer

The Staff Technical Writer reports to a Manager or Senior Manager, Technical Writing.

Staff Technical Writer Job Level

The Staff Technical Writer is outlined in the Job Levels resource.

Staff Technical Writer Responsibilities

Extends the Senior Technical Writer responsibilities in complexity and scope.

• AI: Model use of approved AI tools and guide quality checks for generated output. Identify where AI-assisted approaches can improve efficiency and quality. Guide evolving team practices around AI workflows.
• Content: Efficiently create, merge, and maintain product documentation across product stages and sections. Guide improvements to documentation and merge requests. Suggest and balance priorities.
• Structure: Actively develop and implement content topic types in both new and previously created content to make product documentation easier for humans to scan and comprehend, and AI to retrieve accurately.
• Organization: Ensure that product documentation pages are well organized across stages and sections by using good naming and logical groupings.
• User interface: Lead efforts to improve the product user experience by creating model examples of user interface text, including field labels or error messages, with a cross-stage focus. Actively improve style guide and Pajamas content related to user interface text.
• Reviews: Model review practices that improve the quality of contributions over time. Support and guide team members to improve reviews in their groups and stages.
• Product knowledge: Understand the technology and features of both the development stages to which you’re assigned and the end-to-end GitLab product to help improve the documentation, information architecture, and docs site.
• Process: Design and lead workflow and process improvements that help the Technical Writing team evolve the culture and best practices. Identify systemic problems and the most efficient AI or GitLab tooling solution. Build alignment with relevant stakeholders, support implementation, and encourage adoption across the Technical Writing team.
• Communication: Communicate effectively and professionally in all areas, and be a model for effective collaboration.
• Metrics: Lead efforts to identify data and build dashboards to bring the team in alignment on KPIs, improve processes, or improve decision making with the use of metrics.
• Documentation systems: Partner with the Technical Writing Engineer to translate documentation, content-quality, and user needs into improvements to documentation systems and workflows. Define requirements and success criteria for capabilities such as linting and documentation quality checks, workflows for publishing, and docs-site functionality, and support adoption across the Technical Writing team.
• Cross-functional leadership: Identify opportunities to work with other teams whose work in GitLab intersects with Technical Writing. Partner with other functions to provide domain expertise and achieve shared customer or company outcomes.
• Leadership: Identify and lead cross-stage projects that improve the deliverables or processes of the Technical Writing team. Model professionalism in all areas. Be an effective thought partner with management to help make technical or project decisions for the team. Be a team leader in a particular segment of responsibility that the team requires: AI, technology, process, content, UX writing, statistics and metrics, and others.
• Recruiting: Be available to interview potential technical writing candidates.
• Mentoring: Mentor other technical writers and team members around suggesting and balancing priorities, industry and AI best practices, and other process knowledge.
• Cross-section collaboration: Drive collaboration across sections by helping technical writers and managers identify dependencies and areas for cross-departmental work.

Principal Technical Writer

The Principal Technical Writer reports to the Senior Manager, Technical Writing, or the Director, Globalization & Localization.

Principal Technical Writer Job Level

The Principal Technical Writer is outlined in the Job Levels resource. The Principal Technical Writer has extensive experience in a Staff-level role.

Principal Technical Writer Responsibilities

Extends the Staff Technical Writer responsibilities in complexity and scope.

• AI: Foster use of approved AI tools, evaluate new tools, and shape workflow governance, reporting risks to leadership. Guide how GitLab approaches AI in documentation, leading discussions with cross-functional stakeholders and setting the benchmark for quality.
• Content: Efficiently create, merge, and maintain product documentation across stages and sections. Guide improvements to merge requests. Help set priorities at a team level.
• Structure: Regularly assess the product documentation to ensure it’s easy for humans to scan and comprehend, and AI to retrieve accurately. Lead efforts to restructure information architecture of the site.
• Organization: Define enterprise information architecture standards. Ensure that product documentation pages are well organized across stages by using good naming and logical groupings that adhere to best practices for both human and AI consumption.
• User interface: Provide expert guidance on improving the product user experience. Actively improve style guide and Pajamas content.
• Reviews: Foster and evaluate effective review practices for team, community, and AI contributions to GitLab documentation and user interface changes.
• Product knowledge: Deeply understand the technology and features of the development sections, and have a general understanding of the end-to-end GitLab product to help improve the information architecture of the docs site.
• Process: Actively contribute changes that help the organization evolve the culture and best practices, and lead efforts to encourage other team members to contribute changes. Identify systemic problems, determine the most efficient AI or GitLab tooling solution, design and lead improvements to documentation processes, build alignment with relevant stakeholders, support implementation, and drive adoption across the Technical Writing team.
• Communication: Communicate effectively and professionally across all product groups, stages, and sections, and be a model for collaboration with community contributors.
• Metrics: Lead efforts to identify new data and build dashboards to bring the team in alignment on KPIs, maximize efficiency, and make data-driven decisions that improve the overall ROI for the department. Use trends to suggest improvements to content, information architecture, taxonomy, or tooling.
• Documentation systems: Lead on initiatives, partnering with the Technical Writing Engineer to translate documentation, content-quality, and user needs into improvements to documentation systems and workflows. Define requirements and success criteria for capabilities such as linting and documentation quality checks, workflows for publishing, and docs-site functionality, and drive adoption across the Technical Writing team.
• Cross-functional leadership: Form strategic partnerships with other functions and lead efforts to collaborate with other teams whose work intersects with Technical Writing. Lead on key initiatives and projects that achieve shared customer or company outcomes.
• Site ownership: Act as the product owner of docs.gitlab.com, helping to prioritize engineering, information architecture, and design efforts.
• Leadership: Identify and lead cross-department projects that improve the deliverables or processes of the Technical Writing team.
• Recruiting: Be available to interview potential technical writing candidates.
• Mentoring: Mentor other technical writers and team members regarding best practices and other process knowledge.
• Impact: Provide positive influence on the adoption of the GitLab product through more usable documentation, with the ultimate goal being a contribution to higher ARR.

Hiring Process

Candidates for this position can generally expect the hiring process to follow these steps. Please keep in mind that candidates may be declined at any stage.

1. Candidates who demonstrate interest in the role will be asked to share work samples and respond to questions related to technical writing.
2. Qualified candidates will be invited to schedule a 30-minute screening call with one of our Global Recruiters. In this call, we will discuss your experience, understand what you are looking for in a technical writing role, talk about your work and approach to technical writing, discuss your compensation expectations and reasons why you want to join GitLab, and answer any questions you have.
3. If you successfully pass the screening call, you will be invited to schedule a 50-minute interview with one of our Technical Writing Managers. In this interview, we will want you to talk through the approach you took in the examples of work you shared as part of your application, and your experience up to now. We’ll also want to understand what you’re looking for in a technical writing position, and answer any questions you have.
4. The next interview is a 50-minute call with one of our Technical Writers. We’ll discuss your experience, why you’re looking to join GitLab, your domain expertise, and what it’s like to be a technical writer at GitLab. We’ll also assess your alignment with our operating principles, and answer any questions you have.
5. Next, you’ll meet with a cross-functional partner from our Product, Engineering, or Customer Support team for a 50-minute interview. We’ll discuss your experience and why you’re looking to join GitLab. We’ll assess your alignment with our operating principles, and answer any questions you have.
6. Finally, you’ll meet our Director, Globalization & Localization, for a 50-minute interview. At this stage, we’ll look to understand your views on documentation strategy, how you apply system thinking to the role, and your experience up to now. The interviewer will answer any questions you have.

Additional details about our process can be found on our hiring page.

 

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About GitLab

GitLab is an open core software company that develops the most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform, used by more than 100,000 organizations. Our mission is to enable everyone to contribute to and co-create the software that powers our world. When everyone can contribute, consumers become contributors, significantly accelerating the rate of human progress. This mission is integral to our culture, influencing how we hire, build products, and lead our industry. We make this possible at GitLab by running our operations on our product and staying aligned with our values. Learn more about Life at GitLab. Thanks to products like Duo Enterprise, and Duo Workflow, customers get the benefit of AI at every stage of the SDLC. The same principles built into our products are reflected in how our team works: we embrace AI as a core productivity multiplier. All team members are encouraged and expected to incorporate AI into their daily workflows to drive efficiency, innovation, and impact across our global organisation.

See our culture page for more!

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